inquiring into the said differences, and for adjusting the same on fair and equitable principles_.” If that was not, in every legitimate sense, a reference and submission, the commission was a transparent farce, and the English language has ceased to convey definite ideas. How did the commissioners regard the matter? “Perhaps,” said they in their report, “no three men in British America were ever called to arbitrate upon interests of the same magnitude, or questions of greater delicacy affecting the welfare of large numbers of people. If a judge or a juror, about to decide the title to a single estate, feels the responsibility of his position, the undersigned may be pardoned for admitting that, with hundreds of estates, and the interests of many thousands of persons dependent upon their adjudication, they have only been sustained by a very sincere desire to restore peace to a disturbed province.” And what did all the legal gentlemen who, as counsel, represented before the commissioners the various interests involved, think of the powers with which they—the commissioners—were invested? Why, all their speeches assumed that they were addressing themselves to adjudicators who had ample authority to solve the questions in dispute. This was admitted by Sir Samuel Cunard, as representing his co-proprietors, _after_ the award of the commissioners was given; for in writing the Duke of Newcastle, the law officers of the Crown represent him as saying “that the landlords were ready to be bound by the decision of the three commissioners, but that they were not prepared to hand over their interests to the proposed arbitrators, and to embark in the expense and dispute consequent on a multitude of petty arbitrations,”—referring to the arbitrators proposed by the commissioners to determine the value of every individual property, with a view to purchase by the tenant. Yet, in the face of such overwhelming evidence, the colonial secretary had the coolness to parade the opinion of the law officers of the Crown before the government, legislature, and people of Prince Edward Island, that there was no reference or award, properly so called, very prudently abstaining from any expression of _his own_ opinion on the point.